Our oceans are an endless cornucopia of weirdness . Today , we ’d wish to usher in you to a squiffy cryptic - ocean cephalopod call the hemangioma simplex calamari . investigator writing in the journalPhilosophical Transactions of the Royal Society Bsay each of the squid ’s unusual eye serves a separate aim in the black deepness of the sea .
Histioteuthis heteropsis(literally “ unlike eye ” ) is pinkish , stud with bioluminescent spots , and quite contented to cruise through the “ twilight zona ” some 650–3300 feet beneath the surface of the ocean . It has one tremendous yellow eye and one normal disconsolate eye — as normal assquid eyesget , anyway .
Biologist Kate Thomas of Duke University , lead source on the report , says she was affect by the strawberry calamary ’s strangeness . “ You ca n’t see at one and not wonder what ’s live on on with them , ” she say in the video above .
So she settle to receive out . She pull up 30 years ' worth of submarine video recorded by remotely operate vehicles at the Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute and scrolled through , find out the squids ’ behavior and looking for clues . She analyzed 152 differentH. heteropsissightings and another nine sightings of its cousin , Stigmatoteuthis dofleini .
The onscreen sighting revealed yet another strawberry squid eccentricity : They like to float along upside down , with their heads point toward the sea floor . But this posture , while capricious , come out to be practical . The chief - down orientation aims the squid ’s enceinte eye toward the airfoil — which is where any luminosity might originate . The little blue eye , better suited for spottingbioluminescence , can keep looking downwards into the darkness .
Senior writer Sönke Johnsen , Thomas ’s advisor , said the squid ’s gloomy center could only have one job . “ There is no style it is able to pick out figure against the ambient luminosity , " he said in a statement . " And once it is looking for bioluminescence , it does n’t really ask to be peculiarly big , so it can really shrivel up a little bit over generations . But the centre depend up actually does benefit from getting a bit bigger . ”
It ’s an cunning resolution to a broken - light situation . “ eye are really expensive to make and maintain , ” Thomas add . “ You want eyes just big enough to do what you require to do , but you do n’t want to have any bigger eye because then you are just wasting resources . ”
